Playstation3

PlayStation3 will be released at the end of this year. It seems the last hope of SONY. As you know, SONY has a problem with the profit decline. Actually, SONY adhered to the Trinitron TV that was the most popular analogue TV in 90s. As a result, they were late to join the DTV market: SONY did not invest LCD panel or PDP and so they was not able to make better digital TVs than other competitors.

The PS3 will come in two configurations: one version with a 60GB hard drive that will cost $599, and the second with a 20GB hard drive that will come in at $499

The PS3, which is based on the Cell processor, will support Blu-ray media. It also includes built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, as well as Ethernet. Further, it includes Dolby digital surround sound functionality and supports high-definition video up to 1080p.

The console also can run up to seven wireless controllers at once, and all PS3s will come with a built-in hard drive, either 60GB or 20GB.

Finally, it supports USB, Sony Memory Sticks, Secure Digital (SD) and CompactFlash.

What a great gadget it is!

However, PS3 would be more expensive than others such as XBOX360, Wii
Good quality of graphics does not guarantee the success of the market.

Anyway, the competition is always welcome to the users because the price of console could be down. :)

Apple's 30th Anniversary

It has been 30 years since Apple was founded on 1 April 2006 (1976 - 2006).  It was a long history than I expected compared to Microsoft. 

Apple is a computer manufacturer and MS is a software company. Two companies have helped each other and also have a competitive relationship. Two companies are developing different operating system, but MS is developing software for Mac. 

It is interesting that the first version of MS Excel was for Mac and Internet Explorer was the official web browser of Mac before releasing Safari. But now, two companies compete more than before. Apple is also developing an office software.

Over the past decade, Apple had to struggle to survive so Steve Jobs could return with his company NEXT and wrote a successful story with Mac OS X and iMac series. It may be said that Apple is at the turning point in the success of iPod and iTunes Music Store. As a result, Apple is not only a computer manufacturer but also a CE maker & contents provider. I expect that Apple would lead the technology of computer & CE device areas in term of innovations and makes computing environment easier and comfortable. If you want to know more history about Apple, visit the below sites.

http://www.apple-history.com

http://apple.computerhistory.org

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is so powerful to dominate our new life on the Internet. del.icio.us is the shared bookmark service that adopts the concept of web 2.0 and Flickr is also a good example of web 2.0.
They are using the concept of tags. We can attach tag to pictures or bookmarks. Tag is like keyword that presents the meaning of something. Before, I only classify something to one category. Now, We can classify pictures or bookmarks to several category that using tags.
It's so great!

Became an iPod user

At last, I bought a video iPod that is the 5th generation of the iPod family. It is thinner and lighter than I expected. Using an iPod is very easy for me because I already have used iTunes on my Mac. In addition, I have many mp3 files and video files in my iTunes music library. The problem is that I have to resize video files to move to iPod. Fortunately, iTunes  can resize the video files, which have a large screen size, to play well on the iPod. Of course it takes a lot of time to covert the size of video. Anyway, It is good to enjoy the video on my new iPod when moving.

Flash memory

Today’s topic is about flash memory.
Flash memory is one of memory you are using everyday in your mobile devices.
Almost memories on your PC lose data when the power is off. However, flash memory can maintain data though the power is off. You are already experienced that your mp3 player never loses music files.

What is Flash Memory?
Flash memory is non-volatile, which means that it does not need power to maintain the information stored in the chip. In addition, flash memory offers fast read access times (though not as fast as volatile DRAM memory used for main memory in PCs) and better shock resistance than hard disks. ( from wikipedia)

Therefore, there are many applications that use flash memory such as storage on battery-powered device like MP3 Player, mobile phone and PDA. In addition, External USB storage we are using has a flash memory.

Flash memory is made in two forms: NOR flash and NAND flash. The name refers to the type of logic gate used in each storage cell.
Almost flash memory we are using to store data is NAND flash. NOR flash is used for running program like DRAM.

As you know, SAMSUNG is world's largest NAND flash memory chipmaker. The market share is 60%(?). The success of Apple's iPod enlarges the market of flash memory. So INTEL has a plan to produce NAND flash memory with Micronics that is one of the memory manufacturer in the US.

Followed by Hwang's law, Samsung under Hwang has redoubled chip capacity every year since 1999, creating an industrial pattern named "Hwang's law," overturning the previous "Moore's law" that had correctly observed the number of transistors per integrated circuit would double every couple of years.(from Korea times)

Anyway, more information will be stored to flash memory for future. Flash memory may replace hard disk.

My PC

I have three computers. One is a power mac, another is a PC and the other is a notebook.
The power Mac is very fast and provides good performance because it has two CPU.
However, PC is very slow. It had been 4 years and 9 month after I bought.
For a long time, I added new equipments including a DVD-RW, a 1394 port and a USB2 port to my PC.
It has been sufficient to use my PC except CPU speed. However, the speed is always critical to use my PC after WindowsXP has been installed.

However, I do not have any plan to upgrade my PC because I already bought the power mac G5, but whenever I browse web sites, the Internet Explorer is mandatory to navigate specific sites that requires the transaction. I cannot but turn on my PC.

I will use the Mac & my PC simultaneously for some time.

Long time no see!

I forgot that there was my blog in the blogger.
There are many blog sites in the internet, so I have serveral blogs such as the bloglines, livejournal, egloos, and my own blog in my web hosting server. Particularly, The egloos is a popular blog service in Korea, especially for developers, because it doesn't need to show any AD and provides some features which other blog service can't follow. For example, your blogs can be printed out a colored book. :)

Actually, the blogger was not useful before, it seemed like a ftp server because we had to upload articles to the server, but was not able to upload images. Now, the service has been upgraded to support image upload to the server. So, I am considering using the blogger more frequently.

Here is my English blog

I already have a blog. which is only written in Korean so I stated to post the first English blog article here to share my story with my foreign friends.  I hope you enjoy my English blog although my English is not good enough.